The present invention relates to data processing, and more specifically, to a method and system for providing a homogeneous view of a distributed common information model (CIM) within a heterogeneous virtual system environment.
Computer system management requires information about computer components and network components, the state of each of those items, and their relationships. This information may include discovery of networks, network paths, computers, operating systems, file systems, installed applications and application components, user transactions, and other information. An open standard called Common Information Model (CIM) was developed for managing these items. The CIM model defines representations of managed elements in an IT environment (and relationships between them) as a common set of objects. These representations seek to provide consistent management of these managed elements, independent of their manufacturer or provider. The use of CIM allows multiple parties to exchange management information about these managed elements. CIM not only represents these managed elements and the management information, but also provides a means to actively control these elements. By using a common model of information, management software can be written once and work with many implementations of the common model without complex and costly conversion operations or loss of information.
In a computer landscape with more than one CIM repository available, each CIM repository contains CIM providers, which procure its own computer system-specific information and provide this information to consumers (e.g., end users) via a CIM client. The current method for a CIM client to obtain information across CIM repositories is to separately connect to each repository. The repository discovery is done either by using Service Location Protocol (SLP, which is a service discovery protocol allowing computers and other devices to find services in a local area network without prior configuration), or by referencing other repositories from a single CIM repository. There is currently no way to gather cross-repository information from a single centralized repository.
Commonly assigned U.S. Patent Publication No. 2007/0073877 entitled, “Method and System for Unified Support of Multiple System Management Information Models in a Multiple Host Environment,” filed on Aug. 25, 2005 describes a method and system for employing CIM resources within a data processing system. A request is received for an operation with respect to CIM resources, and a determination is made as to whether the request can be fulfilled locally or remotely. In response to a determination to fulfill the request locally, the request is delegated to local CIM Object Manager (CIMOM) functionality to obtain resulting data, e.g., from a local repository or from a locally managed provider. In response to a determination to fulfill the request remotely, the request is delegated to one or more remote CIMOMs, and the resultant data is aggregated from a plurality of remote CIMOMs. The logic that determines whether the request is a local or a remote one is implemented as the part of the CIMOM itself. This requires modifications of the CIMOM implementations.
It would be advantageous to provide a means for gathering cross-repository information from a single centralized repository without changing the CIMOM implementation.